Okay, so how do we describe the axis of masculinity? It occured to me last night while watching The Godfather that Diane Keaton, when taken as a function of her leading men, describes a linear interpolation between two opposite, but equally important, components of the male psyche.
In The Godfather, she is married to Michael Corleone, who is pretty much the poster child for the patriarchy. And while Michael (and, indeed, Vito) have a number of minor character flaws, their essential strength and consistency make them very appealing figures.
In Annie Hall, por otro lado, Ms. Keaton is paired against Wood Allen's quintessential self-parody, Alvy Singer. Every character he's ever played is pretty much a variation on Alvy. As characters go, you couldn't be less like Michael Corleone than Alvy is, unless you made him, like, Romulan or something.
So, where along the Singer/Corleone axis, as defined by the Keaton attractor, is the ideal (minimum energy) point? The answer is obvious, of course: Steve McQueen. We knew that going in. Alternative first-order (Euler or Rung-Kutta) approximations may also produce James Garner, Lee Marvin or Alan Arkin, but the McQueen result is accurate to several decimal places beyond these values.
And yet, there is an unaccountable discrepancy in this otherwise unassailable logic: Diane Keaton never dated Steve McQueen. Troubling.
Posted by Jason at July 22, 2003 02:13 PM